‘Hello?’
‘Amy, it’s Matt. We need to talk—we will have been seen last night. Where are you now?’
‘Oh, damn. In the courtyard. Bring coffee.’
Stressed as he was, he smiled at that. He found a breakfast waitress and ordered a pot of coffee and a basket of bacon rolls, then went and found her.
She was waiting, her heart speeding up as she caught sight of him, her nerves on edge. She couldn’t believe what she’d done, couldn’t believe she was going to sit here with him and concoct some cock-and-bull story to tell his family. Her friends. Oh, lord …
‘How’s Mel?’ she asked, sticking to something safe.
‘Fine. The babies are both doing well.’
‘Good. Ben and Daisy’ll be pleased.’
Silence. Of course there was, she thought. What was there to say, for heaven’s sake? Thank you for the best sex I’ve had in over four years? Not to say the only …?
‘Any sign of the others?’ he asked after the silence had stretched out into the hereafter, and she shook her head.
‘No. I put my bag in the car. Here’s your room key. So—what’s the story?’
‘We wanted to talk?’
‘We didn’t talk, Matt,’ she reminded him bluntly.
Pity they hadn’t, she thought for the thousandth time. If they’d talked, they might have had more sense.
‘You were feeling sick?’ he suggested.
‘What—from all that champagne?’
‘It’s not impossible.’
‘I had less than you.’
‘I think it’s probably fair to say we both had more than was sensible,’ he said drily, and she had to agree, but not out loud. She wasn’t feeling that magnanimous.
‘Maybe nobody noticed?’ she said without any real conviction, and he gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
‘Dream on, Amy. I dragged you off the dance floor and up the stairs in full view of everyone. I think someone will have noticed.’
She groaned and put her face in her hands, and then he started to laugh again, a soft, despairing sound that made her lift her head and meet his eyes. ‘What?’
‘I have some vague recollection of passing my parents in the hall.’
She groaned again. It just got better and better.
‘Maybe you thought I needed to lie down?’ she suggested wildly. ‘Perhaps I’d told you I was feeling rough? It’s not so unlikely, and it’s beginning to look like the best option.’
‘We could always tell them the truth.’
If we knew what it was, she thought, but the waitress arrived then with the tray of coffee and bacon rolls, and she seized one and sank her teeth into it and groaned. ‘Oh, good choice,’ she mumbled, and he laughed.
‘Our default hangover food,’ he said, bringing the memories crashing back. ‘Want some ketchup?’
‘That’s disgusting,’ she said, watching him squirt a dollop into his bacon roll and then demolish it in three bites before reaching for another. The times they’d done that, woken up on the morning after the night before and he’d cooked her bacon rolls and made her coffee.
He’d done that after their first night together, she remembered. And when she’d come out of hospital after—
She put the roll down and reached for her coffee, her appetite evaporating.
‘So when are you off?’ she asked.
‘Tuesday morning,’ he said, surprising her. ‘Things are quiet at work at the moment, so I said I’d keep an eye on Mel till Ben and Daisy get back. They’re only away for two nights.’
‘Are you staying here?’
‘No. I’m going back to Ben’s.’
She nodded. It made sense, but she wasn’t thrilled. She’d be tripping over him in the hospital at random times, bumping into him at Daisy’s house when she went to feed Tabitha—because if he was next door at Ben’s, there was no way she was going to stay there, as she’d half thought she might, to keep the cat company.
Or moving in and renting it as they’d suggested, come to that. Not after last night’s folly. The last thing she wanted was to be bumping into Ben’s brother every time he came up to visit them.
Daisy had stayed in her own house adjoining Ben’s until the wedding because of Florence, but she’d be moving into his half when they came back, and they’d offered her Daisy’s house. They wanted a tenant they could trust, and her lease was coming up for renewal, and it was a lot nicer than her flat for all sorts of reasons.
It had off-road parking, a garden, a lovely conservatory—and the best neighbours in the world. She’d been debating whether to take it, because of the danger of bumping into Matt who was bound to be coming back and forth to visit them, but after this—well, how could she relax?
She couldn’t. It would have been bad enough before.
‘Why don’t we just tell them to mind their own business?’ she suggested at last. ‘It really is nothing to do with them if we chose to—’
She broke off, and he raised a brow thoughtfully.
‘Chose to—?’
But his phone rang, and he scanned the screen and answered it, pulling a face.
‘Hi, Ben.’
‘Is that a private party over there, or can we join you?’
He looked up, and saw his brother and brand-new sister-in-law standing in the doorway watching them across the courtyard.
Amy followed the direction of his eyes, and sighed.
‘Stand by to be grilled like a kipper,’ she muttered, and stood up to hug Daisy. ‘Well, good morning. How’s the head?’
Daisy smiled smugly, looking very pleased with herself. ‘Clear as a bell. In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t drinking.’
Amy frowned, then looked from one to the other and felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. Ben’s eyes were shining, and there was a smile he couldn’t quite hide. ‘Oh—that’s wonderful,’ she said softly, and then to her utter humiliation her eyes welled over. She hugged Daisy hard, then turned to Ben—just in time to see Matt release him with a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen since—
‘Congratulations, that’s amazing,’ he said gruffly, and gathered Daisy up and hugged her, too, his expression carefully veiled now.
Except that Amy could still see it, lingering in the back of his eyes, a fleeting echo of a grief once so raw it had torn them apart.
‘So, when’s it due?’ he asked, going through the motions. Not that he wasn’t interested, but today of all days …
‘The tenth of May. It’s very, very early on,’ Daisy said wryly. ‘I did the test this morning.’
‘Right after she threw up.’
Matt gave a soft huff of sympathetic laughter. ‘Poor Daisy. It passes, I’m reliably informed by my patients.’ That’s right, keep it impersonal …
‘It’s a good sign,’ Amy said, her voice slightly strained to his ears. ‘Means the pregnancy’s secure.’ Unlike hers.